Chapter Text
While Aizawa stared at him as if he'd lost his mind, Midoriya sighed and pinched his nose. "Shimura?" A one-word question from Aizawa, his eyes narrowed.
"Unfortunately. She's… insufferable." Midoriya paused and collected himself. "Back up. What do you mean Setsuna almost killed Shinso? I thought that today's training was quirkless sparring outside of my individual session."
Aizawa stared for a long moment at Midoriya. The man was looking better than he had been before his meltdown, but the last several days hadn't been kind. Rings surrounded his eyes, getting darker by the day, and either Shimura was being worse than usual, or Midoriya was becoming more irritable. Certainly not something he thought the students needed.
Aizawa shook his head. It's Nedzu's problem, and Midoriya's an adult. He knows how much sleep he needs. "It was at the end of the class, and yes, it was quirkless sparring. We don't start incorporating quirks until after next week's rescue introduction. They need Thirteen's deadly quirks speech first."
Midoriya couldn't help but snort at that. He was as deadly with his hands as this class was with their quirks. Anything could be a weapon if used as such. "Then what happened? We both know Sekijiro transferred her your way in case you needed to cancel her quirk, but he said nothing of her being unstable. I didn't see any overly violent tendencies from the footage, either."
Aizawa narrowed his eyes. "Your idea of overly violent and mine differ, apparently." Aizawa brought out his phone and pulled the security footage from the incident. "When the president reviewed the footage, he told me to show it to you, said that you would know what you were looking at." Something that was starting to get on Aizawa's nerves. Any time he demanded answers regarding Midoriya, the damned rat would just smile and wave him off.
Midoriya frowned. "Why would I have any more of an idea than you?" Midoriya leaned into the phone and watched the footage playback briefly. Midoriya's eyebrows came together, his eyes narrowing. "Was that…"
Aizawa watched as Midoriya pulled a small silver wristband from his pocket and waved him over to the shaded side of the building. The wristband lit up, even as Midoriya spoke softly. "Phoenix, pull the footage from Aizawa's phone and stream it through the holoband. See if you can't clean it up while you're at it." Aizawa opened his mouth to ask why he was talking to his facility's A.I. outside of the dorms before his jaw clenched. His phone lit up briefly before blacking out as the security footage projected into the air in front of them.
"Midoriya." The low growl from Aizawa's throat clued Midoriya into what he thought was annoyance.
He waved him off. "Your phone's security is terrible. I'll get you a better device from my stores later. Now, let's see," Midoriya eyed the footage, watching it through a second time. Both students were squared off against each other. Their stances could use work. Irrelevant. Midoriya watched as the two began to circle, watched as Shinso's face passed the camera, his lips moving as he spoke. "He's taunting Setsuna."
"A perfectly valid tactic against an opponent."
Midoriya, again, merely waved as if swatting at a mosquito. "Of course it is. The goal is to survive a fight. Anything that gets you there is valid." Aizawa wasn't sure he liked just how set Midoriya was on the anything part of that. "Good tactic… wrong opponent. There," Setsuna lunged at Shinso, her fingers transforming into razor-sharp talons before pinning him to the ground with a snarl on her face. "Phoenix, right before she stiffens up, please. Frame by frame."
The two watched the footage as it crept through. A loose fighting stance, tense, tenser. Something unidentifiable to Aizawa in the eyes for only a handful of frames before it was replaced by blown pupils full of fury and teeth. "Son of a-"
Aizawa's head snapped to Midoriya, even as he cut himself off. "Nedzu was right. You know what just happened."
Midoriya growled viciously, setting Aizawa on edge. "I have a pretty good idea, and if that's the case..." Midoriya trailed off, biting his lip hard enough to put in an incisor straight through. Why the hell would Nedzu leave this to me? Did he assume that I'd seen this in the hospital? I'm not a counselor. I have only one method of dealing with aggressive predatory quirks. Does he know more than he's letting on about me? How? Bullshit. If he's in my personal files, Phoenix or Shadow would have noticed an intrusion. How…?
"Midoriya?" Midoriya shot a glance at Aizawa. "Was Nedzu also correct that you can deal with this?" Those eyes held his for another instant before Midoriya cursed, fists clenching.
"Were those his exact words?" he asked slowly.
Aizawa gave him a confused affirmative. "He stated that you could deal with the problem the way you know how, once you recognized it from the footage."
"Fuck. Fucking fuck. He wants it dealt with, does he? Nedzu wants ME to deal with this? Motherfucking fucking gods damned fuck. Fine. But hell if I'm taking her tomorrow. We're dealing with this now. I'll get Setsuna, you get Shuzenji. Meet at Gym Gamma?"
Aizawa narrowed his eyes. The intense profanity would normally have him reprimanding a student, but Aizawa got this feeling he wasn't going to like this. "Why do we need the TDL and Shuzenji?"
Midoriya stalked towards the front door of the dorm. "Because this is going to get ugly."
…
When Nedzu truly smiled, it upset anyone who saw it. The chimera was the size of a small middle schooler, after all. A furry middle schooler with a maw full of razor-sharp canid teeth. Nedzu smiled now from the back of his transportation as he watched Midoriya stomp towards the entrance of the dorms on his tablet. Midoriya had recognized what Nedzu had. Nedzu had smelt what he thought he had. He hadn't in the beginning, oh no, not at all. It had begun after Toshinori's fuck up. He smelled it now, under the clawing odor of gunpowder, oil, and soap.
Nedzu was just so excited to investigate. It had been so long since a mystery like this had dropped into his lap.Ex-military? Ex-special forces? Perhaps, he certainly hadn't been lying. But what else? For whom? Had it been the Japanese government? Nedzu wouldn't be surprised. No, he wouldn't be surprised at all. After all, wasn't he another one of their experiments? Or had they been the Commission? It didn't really matter anymore, he'd long since torn out those scientists' throats himself.
How he loved his two new personal students. One had no moral compass whatsoever, as long as she could create, and oh how he could work with that. But his other? What was Midoriya's compass?
Nedzu's driver rolled down the separator between them, shuddering at the manic gleam and sharp smile. "We're here, sir. Do you need anything else?"
Nedzu waved him off with thanks, dismissing him until his meeting was over. Even as he stepped out of the vehicle, however, Nedzu's thoughts turned back to his personal student and the young woman he was about to deal with. What manner of beast is he? How would his wonderful mystery student deal with another predator, he wondered. He smelled just like his siblings had. Nedzu chuckled darkly to himself. He knew how he'd deal with another predator in his territory unannounced. Oh, it'll be a bloodbath. Those two should have fun. How wonderful, it's been a while since I've gotten footage of a good one.
…
Midoriya and Setsuna stood in the middle of the concrete, warehouse-sized gym. Both of them had changed into their hero costumes for the second time that day, Setsuna's with several red stains down the front. Midoriya stood stiffly with his arms crossed, while Aizawa and Chiyo stood by the edge of the empty room on standby. Setsuna smiled nervously at the glare on Midoriya's face. "Hey, uh, I guess I'm next on the list, huh?"
Ashido had complained loudly that she'd been the first on the "quirk help list" after she'd finally come out of her room. She hadn't looked very good when she did, pale for the pink-skinned woman and shaky. Every time she looked at Midoriya, she'd jerked her gaze away. Ashido had livined up quickly after realizing that the list hadn't been alphabetical order and that she was somehow at the top of it. It had, of course, been entirely coincidental, not that anyone could get that information to stick.
Midoriya narrowed his eyes before, to an untrained eye, relaxing and smiling softly. "No, I was going to talk to Shoji tomorrow. You weren't due to come with me until Friday. But instead, here we are after class hours. I think you know why." Setsuna winced back as if he'd slapped the girl. He continued softly, "Would you like to tell me why you attacked your classmate?"
Setsuna chuckled restlessly before answering in a slightly higher pitch. "We were sparring, so of course I'd attack him." Midoriya tilted his head. A wordless gesture to continue that the young woman didn't take.
"Setsuna." His voice was as warm and slow as molasses. "Come now, we all know what happened. I saw the footage, Eraserhead was there, and Recovery Girl treated Shinso."
"He'll be alright, deary. It looked worse than it was. Head wounds bleed a lot." Recovery girl chimed in with a gentle smile, not realizing that something was wrong. Aizawa, however, had stiffened beside her, and his gaze was locked with Midoriya's. The shift hadn't passed him by. Midoriya had looked like someone had fed him dog shit not a minute before. Midoriya was calling them by their hero names.
Setsuna grimaced before seemingly springing back. "That's great to hear. I'm sorry about using my quirk, Professor Aizawa. I know you said the sparring was supposed to be quirkless, but something Shinso said got to me, and I lost my temper." Setsuna bowed slightly at the waist to Aizawa, not enough to bend over fully but enough that Setsuna had to strain to maintain eye contact with the man. Something flickered across her eyes, her jaw stiffening as she looked down at the ground. "I'll accept whatever punishment you and the rest of the faculty decide on."
With Setsuna looking at the ground, she doesn't see it. But Aizawa does, and it makes his mouth go dry.
Midoriya's face had shifted from the soft, warm smile to disgust and disdain. Cold eyes stared down at the woman. Aizawa braced himself as Midoriya opened his mouth, and this time, he was glad he had. "Oh, you lost your temper? Yeah, that's a great excuse for the quirk-charged attempted murder of your classmate. I'm sure a jury would feel so much pity for you."
Shuzenji blinked in shock, and Setsuna jerked again. A low growl sounded from her throat that sounded more like choking. She whipped around to stare Midoriya down. He took a step towards Setsuna, his arms dropping to his sides in a relaxed position before he shrugged. "You see, that excuse just isn't going to work for me, Setsuna. It takes a special kind of person to try and murder their classmate in the name of sparring."
Midoriya took another step toward the woman, his thoughts and feelings now blatantly obvious. His smile took on a predatory tone, and his eyes filled with the promise of violence. "All I've heard are pathetic excuses from a pathetic girl." Another step. "Oh, I didn't mean to, I swear I just lost my temper." Another step and the choked growl turned into a snarl, her lips pulling back around her teeth. "You've yet to tell me the truth, Setsuna. Just what do you think you're doing? I can smell the anxiety. I can smell the fear. What are you hiding? What is your fear?"
Midoriya was right in front of Setsuna now. He was towering over the woman. Aizawa took a step forward, getting ready to separate the two students. Setsuna looked up at Midoriya, near hyperventilating as she warred with her instincts. No, I won't, I can't. Look down. Look away. Please stop. Please back away. Oh god. No No NO NO NO. Snap.
The movement was so fast that Aizawa barely followed it as Setsuna lunged for Midoriya's throat with her teeth. Even faster, however, was Midoriya's knee connecting with the woman's jaw, causing an audible clack. Midoriya's fist connected with Setsuna's gut, sending the woman rolling several feet before she sprung back up, her hands still on the ground.
Aizawa stepped forward, reaching for his capture weapon before freezing, his blood running cold. Midoriya was looking at him now. "No, no, Aizawa. You just stay riiiight over there. This isn't a matter for your like to get involved in. Protect our good doctor." Midoriya cackled a high-pitched sound that turned into deranged laughter as Setsuna charged him again. Setsuna's skin went first, quickly scaling over. The talons that grew from her fingertips dug into the concrete, propelling her towards Midoriya. Her mouth opened wider than should have been possible, and she clamped down on Midoriya's left shoulder, using razor-sharp teeth that slid cleanly into his muscle, even through layers of kevlar.
Midoriya's laughter cut suddenly, but not with any kind of pain or choking. It simply stopped as Midoriya's head rolled down. He stared Setsuna right in the eye as he growled, his right hand coming up and clamping down on her head with increasing pressure until she cried out and released enough for Midoriya to pull her off of him by her skull and slam her face-first into the ground.
"There you are. The real you, after so much effort. You should have started with this. Maybe it would have made this next part easier." Midoriya's words came out as a snarl, a sound deep and primal that set off the fight or flight mechanism in the brain. Aizawa tried to step forward, quirk flaring, only for a knife to embed itself into the concrete at his feet. His breath caught, and he looked up to find glowing viridian pits glaring at him. "Stay right there, Eraserhead, or the next one goes through your kneecap. Turn off your damn quirk. You're making my life harder, and you'll only do more harm in this situation." Like nails on a chalkboard, the voice grated against every instinct Aizawa had honed in his life.
The shoe impacting Setsuna's chest resounded through the hall with a cracking sound as the young woman was sent skidding across the concrete. Setsuna cried out an inhuman sound, spitting blood across the ground. Her skin quickly shifted back after Aizawa's quirk had robbed her of her protection, and she glared Midoriya down with reptilian eyes. "I'll rip out your spine, you-" Midoriya's hand clamped around Setsuna's face again, cutting off her words. Talons came up for his face, and Midoriya gripped the wrist and wrenched it and her elbow a full one hundred and eighty degrees, eliciting another inhuman shriek from the lizard woman. The sound of tearing muscle and shattering bone made the old doctor turn around, pale and shaken.
"YOU are not the alpha at this school, Setsuna Tokage. Not even close. You are not on your territory, nor are we on mine. We are on the territory of a creature far, FAR scarier than you can comprehend. Not physically, oh no, we could flay him so quickly. But scarier than you, or I, in other important ways."
Setsuna wiggled into a position where she could speak through clenched teeth. "I'll tear his throat out, too, then. Setsuna would have just let that purple little shit insult us. He had no right. NO RIGHT. I'll rip him apart first, then I'll come for the rat, and I'll finish by tearing your GOD DAMN SPINE OUT." Aizawa backed away, his body hitting the wall, eyes wide. What the fuck was he watching? This wasn't right, this wasn't even human. What kind of person was Midoriya to so easily tear into his classmate? What kind of person was Setsuna to so easily yell about murdering three people? First Bakugo, now this? Did they need some kind of psychological exam before the students were admitted?
"No, Setsuna, you won't do any of those things," Midoriya snarled at the young woman beneath his hand, even as she jerked, "You aren't two separate beings, little welp. You are one little girl with absolutely no control of your instincts, clearly. Did your sire teach you NOTHING?" Midoriya punched the ground beside the girl hard enough to shake the entire warehouse and shatter the concrete. A wet, ripping sound came from somewhere that Aizawa couldn't see.
Aizawa watched the blood pool at the two students' feet, though neither of them gave as much as an inch. How the hell am I supposed to teach students like this? Nedzu's knowing look from earlier that day came to mind. He knew, Aizawa realized in abject horror. He could have told Aizawa what was wrong. They could have used quirk counselors, if this was a control issue. There were standard methods for dealing with something like this. Why? Why had he chosen to have Midoriya handle this? He had known it was going to turn out like this. Aizawa realized that his boss had known exactly how this would go and had still chosen to take this route.
"This isn't a fucking game, Setsuna. There is no monster lurking under your skin. WE ARE the monsters in our skin. It's always there, so you have to play the game. I'll teach it to you, Setsuna. I'll teach you that line we monsters walk. The game we play to keep the humans from killing us. You have to control the instinct to kill. You have to control the instinct of the hunt." Aizawa watched a silent shudder travel down both of his students at the word hunt, like some kind of primal pleasure dictated the response. "I know just how pleasurable it is, Setsuna. The thrill. But you need to play the game, am I understood? You need to YIELD."
The word held power coming from Midoriya's throat, as some kind of sick whine erupted from Setsuna. The woman's struggle seemed to intensify for a moment, her good hand coming up to try to rake at Midoriya, only for it to be batted away. Her jaw tried to open on a bite. Her legs came up to try to kick at Midoriya's back.
"I SAID YIELD." Midoriya's free fist once again came down onto the concrete ground beside her head, shaking the building with a meaty, squelching sound. Reptilian eyes bored into Midoriya's for a moment longer in fear before dropping to the ground as her entire body relaxed and she stopped struggling.
Midoriya let the woman go and dipped his head with a low growl, muttering something only Setsuna could hear as she exposed her neck to him. She rolled over after a moment, crying out. Midoriya sighed and asked a low question. Setsuna affirmed it, seemingly, asking one in return.
Midoriya gritted his teeth before taking her arm in his hand, pulling a cloth from one of his side pouches for Setsuna to bite down on. Aizawa tried to call out, stumbling forward, but found that neither his voice nor his legs were working all that well. A second, sickening crunch was heard that had Aizawa retching. Midoriya pulled some kind of vial from another pouch and, with a low murmur, injected it into the side of Setsuna's neck.
Midoriya's voice was rough when he spoke up again. "Go get cleaned up, Setsuna. See Recovery Girl and have her clean your injuries, she stepped outside. Then head back to the dorm. That's all for today." Aizawa watched with nauseating dread as Setsuna gave a pleasant sounding affirmation, standing and skipping back to the locker room. She seemed happy about what had just happened. She was smiling. Her arm had been broken like a twig and she'd been brutalized and she was smiling about it. There is so much wrong with this.
Aizawa eventually found his feet and voice again. When he did, he pulled himself off the floor and set a path straight for Midoriya. His capture weapon flew out to wrap around Midoriya, and Midoriya, for what it was worth, didn't even resist.
"What the fuck, Midoriya? Give me one god damned reason I shouldn't arrest you for what you just did." Aizawa flinched when Midoriya looked at him. Gone was the creature he'd seen, and what was left just looked tired, broken, and exasperated within the bindings. Aizawa wasn't certain they would stop him if he wanted out of them. Midoriya knew they wouldn't.
Midoriya's voice was still rough, as if he'd spent hours screaming into the void. "I could give you several. One is that Setsuna wouldn't press charges if I told her not to now. The second is that she legally can't. The student contracts guarantee the right for the teachers to perform nearly any action in the name of training, with a list of exclusions instead of inclusions." Midoriya spit the word like it was poison. "Third, if I hadn't done this, Nedzu would have had Setsuna and her family taken out of the equation entirely. Can't have students that might bring down the reputation. Can't have them misbehaving."
Aizawa balked. "They do what?" He hadn't read the student contracts for the school. He left that to Nedzu. Oh god, I left it to Nedzu. Can't have them misbehaving? What?
Midoriya looked like his soul had left his body. "No one reads the gods damned terms and conditions. I could put the entirety of Mein Kampf in the terms and conditions and people would just agree, wouldn't they?"
Aizawa waved that all off, releasing his hold on the man. "What the fuck was all that, Midoriya?"
Midoriya simply stared at Aizawa, eyes dead. Quietly, he debated his words while he reached over to his arm that had punched the ground. Aizawa nearly threw up when he realized that the white sticking out of the arm was his bone. Aizawa did turn around and throw up when Midoriya simply grabbed his forearm and pulled the bone back into his arm. The sound it made, sliding slowly back through meat and grinding against other bone, would haunt Aizawa's nightmares.
Midoriya scratched his cheek. "Have you ever seen the death rates at the hands of animal quirk heroes, Aizawa? Particularly those with predatory quirks?"
Aizawa glared back at the man who was the cause of most of his current problems. "Should I have?"
Midoriya offered a noncommittal noise before continuing. "There is a reason they are so high. Oh, no one comes close to the accidental kill rate of our illustrious number two, but they are higher than the average. It's all brushed neatly under the rug, though. So much bullshit is." Midoriya trailed off, his eyes glazing over slightly.
"What does that have to do with what the fuck just happened here, Midoriya? Why the fuck would you do this?"
Midoriya gave another noncommittal grunt. "I didn't want this, never something like this. Not this way. Believe it or not, for aggressive predatory quirks, this is the standard. Except this is supposed to be done when they are young, not adults already. Proper counseling comes later. It's just usually handled in house by family, and because of the age difference between a parent and a child, it shouldn't ever get this violent. Apparently," Midoriya said with unending displeasure, "Setsuna's quirk is a mutation in her family line."
Aizawa stared blankly at Midoriya. "That explains nothing."
"You know what? No. Ask Nedzu. He's the one that wanted this, after all."
"You would send me to the president, knowing that if he doesn't give me a sufficient answer, I'm going to come back and arrest you?"
Midoriya just sighed. "You really do know nothing about your own boss. Whatever, Aizawa, do what you must. Even if you choose to do so, good luck getting the charges to stick. I'll be in the dorm building if you need me." Midoriya turned around and headed for the shower.
Aizawa opened his mouth. Closed it. He opened it again. Closed it again. Aizawa watched as the man stumbled into the men's showers. He looked around at the wide stretch of destroyed concrete, blood, and vomit. Seemingly to no one at all, he spread his arms and huffed. "And what the fuck am I supposed to do with all of this?"
Notes:
Warnings for:
Brief stint of excessive swearing
Excessive or gratuitous violence
Blood/Gore
Exposed Bone
Mild Body Horror
I was mistaken when I thought we were two chapters off from the USJ two chapters ago. My spastic brain chose to take us down a side trip of trauma first. Next chapter is a long overdue conversation with the rat and his second. But we ARE getting there. I swear. We're close... WE'RE CLOSE DAMN IT.